


So don't teach me a lesson 'cause I've already learned

by Adeline_Hatter



Series: Lyrical Anxiety [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Pining, Veth's in love with Caleb, Yearning, companion fic, debate, part of a series, thought piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25406710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adeline_Hatter/pseuds/Adeline_Hatter
Summary: Veth loved CalebThere wasn't anything she could do about that.
Relationships: Nott | Veth Brenatto/Caleb Widogast, Yeza Brenatto/Nott | Veth Brenatto
Series: Lyrical Anxiety [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840129
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	So don't teach me a lesson 'cause I've already learned

She realises relatively quickly that what she feels for Caleb is not strictly… It’s not something a married woman should feel anyway.

He’s warm, he’s handsome and he’s sweet. 

When he looks at her, it feels like he is looking at  _ her  _ and not the ears, or the teeth or the claws or... 

Veth, when she meets Caleb, when she is _Nott,_ she feels seen in a way that has never filled her senses before. 

The thought always fills her with a need to apologise to Yeza, to Yeza who is not even here, who thought she was dead for three years who... 

Who she does  _ love  _ but not in the same way. 

  
  
  


She kisses him as Nott, because it is Nott, who loves Caleb and it is Veth who loves Yeza. 

....Isn’t it?

* * *

  
  


Oh, she loves him. 

She  _ loves  _ him, she loves Caleb Widogast and it only grows with each day, with each sweet patient thought that fills her head about how he smiles, or how he glows with spells completed.

Veth sort of hates how he can smile and her day feels a little better, especially if she’s the one who caused that smile in the first place. 

The world is a little brighter when he takes her hands and dances with her for no apparent reason but excitement over his books, over the spells and... 

Oh... She  _ loves  _ him. 

* * *

  
  


It’s harder to sleep when she can’t say good night to him, or read over his shoulder when he thinks she’s asleep and curled into his side. 

But here, next to the canons in a hammock everything is so...  _ Quiet,  _ too quiet, it could almost be her old room in her childhood home in Felderwin, facing a field.

The waves sound terrifying and remind her of the sound of bugs buzzing through that field, it’s so quiet but she is loud. 

Missing, there are noises she’d grown used to but they are now missing.

She misses him. 

* * *

  
  


Veth isn’t blind, she watches him and his eyes, where they go when he doesn’t think anyone is looking. 

She’s not surprised when she watches them land, she never is, he matches with too many others and she’s not jealous. 

Just worried. 

* * *

  
  


He’s too far away now, at least it feels like that at times and then he’ll say her name- Either of them, any of them and she’ll be taunt at attention and hanging on every word. 

Caleb is far, but he’s also far too close at times as well.

* * *

  
  


She’s scared of him, not in the way people would expect but she’s scared of how happy she feels at his side, scared that it means she cannot return to the life she wanted so many years ago. 

She is not scared of the potential burns she might suffer at his hands, she’s not scared of him hurting her, his fingers are always warm and peaceful, gentle and they never linger.

Despite how she kind of wishes they would.

  
  


* * *

He will never hurt her, he will never burn her, words can sting but he is quick to apologise and quicker still to defend her, to step in front of her and whilst it is a little annoying there is comfort in seeing him do so.

There is romance in how she loves him, because that is just where her heart has fallen but more so than that, it is the kind of love that will not dwindle or dissipate no matter what he says or does and she wonders what it is called sometimes. 

A part of her  _ knows  _ she can’t stand beside him forever, but she feels like she’ll love him as much for it. 

* * *

  
  


It doesn’t feel like betrayal.

Which is silly, because it  _ should  _ but it doesn’t, she doesn’t feel guilty for the times that Caleb overtakes her thoughts in the middle of the night.

The only time she finds herself feeling anything close to guilty is when she considers the future, when she wants two things as well as one.

There is Yeza and Luc, her family, her husband and her son.

Then there is the Mighty Nein... Her family who let her build them as her family, who chose  _ her  _ and she had chosen them.

All of them were her family, one she’d had since she was smaller and the other the one who had come to her aid when she’d needed it in recent years.

How could she make them all her family all at once?

How would she... Tell Yeza what she was feeling.

* * *

  
  
  


She wants to leave him, but she doesn’t want to lose him or Luc, they are her family, she fought for them. 

But she’s been fighting for those here as well. 

She finds herself unwilling to leave them just a little more than Yeza, but Luc is the one who calls her to come back. 

Veth grips the bottom of her dress, what is she to do?

* * *

  
  


She likes how Caleb says her name, whether that be Nott or Veth, he sounds out the syllables on both and she can read his lips as he releases them both with short puffs of air. 

Fully, she believes she imagines the way he seems to relax a bit when it slips from his lips, there has never been anything harsh in his tone about her name or her, or… 

_ A dangerous train of thought.  _

  
  


* * *

She is possibly just a little obsessed with the way Caleb’s fingers will skim against her skin, though he avoids touching her now and it makes her gut twist in unexpected ways. 

It had been against the skin of her goblin form, but she could still remember the way his hand had cradled her cheek, how soft but callous his fingers had been, the tiny papercut scars that littered their surface unseen. 

Veth liked Caleb’s hands, worker’s hands, scribe’s hands, wizard’s hands with magic that could echo through his fingertips and make you feel rooted down like nothing else.

His touch does wonders to ground her and it’s scary. 

No one, in her whole life, had ever affected her like that.

* * *

  
  


Her heart doesn’t swing like a pendulum in her chest, it sits, stagnant in the middle, she will deal with Yeza when they return to Nicodranas… Or she’ll try to. 

She will sort it out, she will find a way to stay, to keep and to love, freedom within her grasp.

That is… If she doesn’t forget first.

  
  



End file.
